The present invention relates to a rotary control device having a lock function.
Conventionally, there exist, for example, rotary switches as rotary control devices. In this rotary switch, a knob is provided on a body, which incorporates therein a switch main body such as a pair of contacts, so as to be rotated. The switch main body is actuated by rotatably operating the knob (for example, refer to JP-A-7-335076).
However, the conventional rotary switch does not have a lock function for restraining a rotary operation of the knob. Therefore, the knob can be freely rotated, thereby erroneous operations may occur easily. In particular, in such a situation that the rotary switch is provided in a location where the switch is often subjected to a touch by a hand of an user (a driving person) as on an upper face portion of a console box disposed between a driver's seat and a front passenger's seat in a vehicle, there is a higher possibility that such erroneous operations of the rotary switch occur.
On the contrary to the conventional rotary switch described above, there have also been provided rotary switches which become operative only when a knob is depressed once in an axial direction of the knob and then is rotated. This type of rotary switch cannot be rotated as long as the knob is once depressed in the axial direction of the knob. In short, the rotary switch includes a lock function to keep the knob restrained from being rotated as long as the knob is not depressed once in the axial direction of the knob.
In the case of this type of rotary switch, however, when the knob is rotated, the whole of the knob has to be depressed once in the axial direction. Therefore, the operability of the rotary switch is deteriorated since the whole of the knob has to be depressed for rotary operation.